June 4, 2005

SNOW JOB (via Monsalvat):

Israel Epstein, a journalist, author and propagandist for China whose passion for Communism was fueled in long interviews with Mao in the 1940's and was not dimmed by imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, died last Thursday at a hospital in Beijing. He was 90.

His death was announced by the official New China News Agency.

Mr. Epstein edited China Today, an English-language Chinese newsmagazine, translated the sayings and writings of Mao and Deng Xiaoping and advised the Chinese government on how to polish its overseas image. He became a Chinese citizen, joined the Communist Party and served on official government and party committees.

He and perhaps a dozen other aging foreign-born residents of Beijing were sometimes seen as the last true believers in a revolution that has sometimes seemed blurred by time's passage and China's embrace of free markets and consumerism.

In 1996, The Observer, the London newspaper, said, "Perhaps the most loyal Communists in the country today are foreigners, veteran fellow travelers from a vanished era of idealism." [...]

Mr. Epstein became acquainted with [the American journalist Edgar Snow] after his editor assigned him to review one of Mr. Snow's books, and Mr. Snow showed him his classic "Red Star Over China" before it was published. Mr. Snow reciprocated by reading Mr. Epstein's unpublished works.

Anyone recall whether the Times obituary for George Lincoln Rockwell referred to him as the last survivor of an era of German idealism?
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 4, 2005 9:03 AM